KFU’s Astrakhan expedition unearths remains of 14th century mausoleum

This may be a burial place of the Golden Horde officials of Khan Uzbek’s reign.

One of the expedition members, Vice-Rector for General Security – and experienced archeologist – Rishat Guzeyrov, comments that the fragments are of a mausoleum built by Uzbek on a burial site of one of the previous rulers.

“Archaeologists discovered not only the floor, but also the base where one of the columns that supported the vault of the magnificent building stood. The surface was discovered on which no human foot had set foot since the end of the XIV century. Perhaps one of the Chingizids, the reformer of the Golden Horde, Uzbek Khan, who was engaged in reforms not only religious, but also political and administrative, walked on this floor,” he adds. “Uzbek Khan, who in the 1320s – 1330s created a religious, memorial and cultural complex in the form of a city-necropolis (near the modern village of Lapas), in the center of which was the located excavated mausoleum visited by the leaders and state delegations of Byzantium, Egypt, China and other medieval states. According to our version, this resting place of founders of Golden Horde visited many Russian princes of the given period. In particular, the Moscow prince Ivan Kalita.”

Uzbek introduced Islam as the official religion of the Golden Horde. Before that, the Horde inhabitants were mostly following Tengrianism and old Mongol traditional faiths.

“The people who built the road in the 17th – 18th centuries did not want to touch the holy territory. This place was holy even later. The fact that the necropolis was created only 40 kilometers away from Sarai-Batu shows that Khan Uzbek tried to build it away from the old Horde aristocracy, closer to the steppe,” thinks the Vice-Rector.

Contemporary with Uzbek’s reign, a large scale power play took place in the Russian lands between the Moscow Princedom and the Tver Princedom. Uzbek threw his force behind Moscow, and Ivan Kalita was able to defeat the Tver troops in 1327.

“Later, it was the power of Uzbek Khan that became an example for other khans of the Golden Horde. They believed that his rule was the most powerful and allowed to create one of the strongest states in Eurasia. Later, Khan Tokhtamysh, following the example of Khan Uzbek, in the 1380s tried to build the last capital of the Golden Horde (Orda Muazzam) 20 kilometers south of Lapas. What we are trying to find on the territory of Lapas is considered by many to be a state that consisted of yurts, but this is not true. These were cities built of bricks. We believe that the necropolis city was 5 by 5 kilometers in size, built according to a well-defined blueprint. In the center were the more important burials,” continues Guzeyrov.

The research is sponsored by the Republic of Tatarstan’s State Program of the Preservation of Ethnic Identity of Tatar People. Kazan University has been working on the territory for five years now.